Our first single-hop beer

Let's get one thing straight - I'm not a massive fan of single hopped beers, to me hops are (usually) good at bittering, aroma or flavour and not many of them can multitask, which I suppose makes them male... (actually, hop cones only grow on the female plants, the males are  not needed; hops are dioecious, which means they have separate male and female plants. Only the female produces the flowers that are used for brewing).

So, against all that's gone before, yesterday we brewed a single-hop beer!  And not only that, we used a hop which is quite rare and not often used, Millennium.  It's a reasonably new US hop which is used in dark beers over in America but not seen on our shores often, so when Jay suggested using it and Gazza found we could get some the project seemed a goer!

It's a high alpha bittering hop at 17.1% alpha acids (the stuff that gives beer it's bitterness, this is a very high figure) but we used 10kg in the copper and a further 5kg will be added to the tanks for dry-hopping.  We were pleasantly surprised with the almost Pacific character we got from the cones, with pineapple and tropical fruits coming off during the break-up.

So, although the beer doesn't have a name yet, "Millennium" is sat in FV2 about to commence primary fermentation and it should be an interesting one alright... look out for it in about 3 weeks' time when it gets casked up.

Tap Takeover at the Fox E8

That's right, it's another first for us in the form of a "tap takeover".  On reading up about such things Gazza has come to the conclusion that they are like a meet the brewer except the brewer doesn't have to give speeches or anything else so energetic; sounds like we roll up, drink lots of beer and "press the flesh" as it were... we'll see if this is true next week!

Anyhow, we'd love to see everyone there so the details are as follows..

Thursday 29th January 2014 from 18:00

The Fox Craft Beer Pub
372 Kingsland Road, Haggerston, E8 4DA London

We should have at least 12 beers on, maybe more, during the evening plus Gazza and Jay will be there to berate or buy beer for accordingly.

https://www.facebook.com/events/668121469979964/

The beer list will feature some (or all) of the following;

On Keg...

Belma & Brewise 4.7% golden hoppy
Citraic 5.2% - Citra and Mosaic
Who's been sleeping in my Brain? 4.7% - Golden, hoppy, fruity
Exercise One 5% - golden big fruity hops
Slave to the Wage 4.3% - New Zealand hops, full malty body
Temple of Love 3.8% - big hoppy session beer
Profits of Doom coconut edition 4.5% - sweet lactose stout with coconut flavours
Gazza and Jay's Maple Porter 5.2% - toasty porter with maple syrup
Red Water 4.7% - very pale, rare Waimea NZ hops
every hop i love is dead 5.2% - our 100th brew, almost all Simcoe
Graveyard Eyes 5.2% - Sorachi ace porter
Oceanic v4 4.8% - extra pale, huge nelson Sauvin taste

As for cask...

Mosaic Plus 5.2% - pale, big fruity hops
Cloister Enkel 4.4% - Belgian style "single"
A Good Rogering 6.1% - Black IPA, loads of hops, first in the "insult to history" series
Tidy Bitter 4% - Tasty "standard" bitter, Euro hops
Golden Pixie 3.8% - easy-going session beer with fruity hops in the finish
Whole Hop Project no.1 4.1% - lots and lots of citra!

The Party Line

Today we brewed our latest pale & hoppy little number which, for reasons best known to Gazza (although it's suspected his love of Commie iconography is to blame) is named "The Party Line".

It hints at our ethos which, as you've probably guessed by now, is generally hops and more hops!  This one was brewed from super-pale malt, a touch of wheat, then Magnum, Cascade, Centennial and Belma in the copper and will be dry-hopped with either Centennial or Cascade depending on availability.  As it was a 12 barrel brew (2200 litres) we'll be splitting one tank off to be made into the second of our "Whole Pack Project" beers with the hop in mind this time being Ahtanum which we've never used before.

Next week sees a brew with the rare US hop Millennium which smells pretty damn fruity, although the big question is always if this luscious smell translates into the beer... sadly, this isn't always the case.

We're also doing a tap takeover in London next Thursday, see the next post for details.

About to dig the copper with 17kg of hops down there!

Twig of the Week!

We're obsessed with twigs, as are all craft brewers, so here's the latest contender fresh from a pack of American Cascade hops today...

First bottling day!

After a few test runs we finally bit the bullet today and bottled 3 9's of beer!

It's been a long time coming; regular readers of this gibberish will recall we bought the bottles and bottling kit back in March (or, if not March, then sometime a long way back!) but owing to various happenings, both planned and less so, it's taken us until now to actually bottle some beer on a semi-commercial scale...

We are now the proud owners of 340 bottles of beer which, after a few weeks of conditioning and the necessary quality controls, will be released into the wild... we  already have buyers for the majority of it and so may have to increase volumes next time we bottle; bear with us regards to supply and carbonation as we're still learning the ropes!

So, "Whole Pack Project #1 Citra", "Oceanic" and "A Good Rogering" are now in bottle and we can't wait to test them out in a few weeks' time...

The bottling line!

Jay with the end product

Oceanic in bottle

Jay capping

Some fat bloke pretending to work

The Hopbunker

Well, here's the big news that some already know...

Work began this week on our brewery tap in Cardiff. It's on the Kingsway, opposite the castle and close to the end of Queen Street, and is (for those who remember such things) the old Bogiez (and before that, Barfly) rock club. For those that don't know, it's a concrete cellar below what is now student accommodation, hence the name Hopbunker - it really is like a nuclear shelter down there! We'll be "decorating", if that's the right word, in an industrial fashion which should fit right in with the surroundings.

There are still a few things to be ironed out but we're 95% certain that everything will fall into place and we'll open sometime in February; obviously the plan is to open for the rugby at the beginning of the month... We have a star-studded team being assembled to run it with a very special boss-man who many will already know!

The plans are for UP TO (not necessarily all the time!) 12 cask and 20 keg beers with - obviously - the emphasis on Hopcraft and Pixie Spring beer accompanied by guest beers from far and wide. Our favourite Welsh brewing comrades will be featured prominently but we'll also have brews from all over the UK (sourced from my many contacts!) and there will hopefully be some meet the brewer events and suchlike to sample.

We'll be updating you with more info about this exciting project as soon as we have some, so finally I'll say we hope you can come visit us and sample our beers as an integral part of Cardiff's flourishing craft beer scene.

Cheers, Brothers and Sisters of Myrcene!

To the drain I commit thee....

It's never nice to tip beer away, especially when you know how lovely it was, but we've had a few comments that the final tank of "Slave to the Wage" wasn't tasting quite right so we decided to investigate just what was going on.

It's one of the big batches we brewed late last year and the final tank sat on the dry hops too long through an oversight; normally this wouldn't matter, but Nelson Sauvin pellets seem to change from superbly fruity to overly grassy very quickly.  Add to this a hint of oxidation which has got into the tank somehow from, I'm guessing, not being flushed with CO2 well enough when it was filled up and you get beer which doesn't meet our exacting standards.

So, the remaining five 9's were today committed to the big drain in the sky.  Lessons have been learnt for sure, and I'm confident that it won't happen again - or, as sure as you can be when dealing with a live substance like beer!  I had a sniff of the casks as they were emptied and, whilst I'm sure many brewers would have sent them out without a qualm, I wasn't 100% happy with them so down the drain they went.

To put a positive glint on things this was only 10% of the total batch we brewed, we've learnt plenty about dry-hopping and CO2 flushing of CTs along the way and I'm happy to be preserving our reputation for quality beer rather than sending out second-rate beer.

Onwards and upwards.... 

New year, new ideas (and lots of old ones)

First off, happy new year from everyone at Hopcraft / Pixie Spring!

Now the pleasantries are out of the way I can run through a few of the things we're hoping to achieve this coming year...

• Open a bar in Cardiff - more news on this soon we hope
• Revisit some of our old recipes and rebrew them with all necessary tweaks
• Brew recreations, as near as possible, of recipes from 1910; we're doing this with the help of Ron Pattinson, the top man and law of what beers used to be like, and although the recipes from the Hopcraft brewery of Brackley are missing presumed destroyed we have recipes from a similar regional brewer of the time and so are using those!  An IPA and Stout will be first.  Warning: may contain Goldings.
• Improve consistency and stability of the beers in cask
• Increase kegging to 15-20% of production (currently around 5%)
• Do some more collaborations, both home and away

There are plenty more things we're hoping to do, but that's enough for now...

Keep the faith, Brothers and Sisters of Myrcene!

Have a good Yule / Xmas break!

This is the final post for 2014, a year which has seen some massive upheavals in the brewery but we've come through it stronger and having learnt a lot so expect 2015 to continue along the same tracks we've been ploughing with plenty of one-off pale and hoppy beers, the odd dark one, and some surprises which we'll let you know about next year!  

Oh yeah, and collaborations too... we've loads in the tentative planning stage so we need to firm those up and get some beers brewed.

So, to all our customers - both trade and personal - may we wish you all a happy Yule and hope you get to enjoy plenty of hoppy beer over the period (as well as other stuff too...) and we'll see you all next year, raring to go, but for now... CHEERS!!

Gazza and Jay, the brewhouse team.

Wrapping it all up

Excuse the terrible pun, but this is indeed our final week before we shut down for the Xmas break until new year, a day here and there notwithstanding.

So, it's time to wash all the casks we have and fill them up with beer ready for next year, give the brewery a full caustic brew then put it to bed until new year when it all starts over again!

The coming weekend sees the final deliveries of the year (probably) to Sheffield plus Gazza will be at the beer scooper's Xmas piss-up around Sheffield on Saturday 20th so come and buy him a beer or throw things at him, your choice...

Two M4 trips in less than a week...

I sit writing this knackered from a 12-hour, 400 mile day delivering another load of casks to our lovely customers in Devizes, Reading, Wantage and Rowhook!  We generally do a vanload per month to London but, this month, we filled the van twice and probably could have done another run if someone had inserted another day into the calendar...

Anyhow, we're brewing tomorrow - the first and only time in December as we stocked up on beer during October and November - and it'll be a Black IPA, the first one since "Ta Moko" in October 2013 and only our second one ever... unless you count "Graveyard Eyes" Mk.1 as one (you'd have a good argument if you did...)

It'll be a 5.5%-ish beast with 100+ IBUs from the glorious combination of Citra, Summit, Cluster and Columbus hops and Weyermann Carafa Spezial No.1 and, as you've probably guessed, it doesn't have a name yet although we'll think of one eventually.  I love Black IPAs but, for reasons unknown, they haven't featured on the brewing schedule as heavily as I'd have liked; hopefully this will remedy that situation!

"Goldings Balls" is in cask

Guessing this isn't the kind of name you expect from us, eh?

Well, that's what collabs are about, taking something from each participant and creating something both can put their name to... which is, hopefully, what this will end up!

Anyhow, it's in cask and tasting mellow, malty, softly fruity and with a gentle bitterness and yellow/gold in colour... it'll be out and about from next week so watch out for it and please let us know what you think if you get to try it!

Dry-hopping in the FV

Is something we've only tried once before (it didn't really work) but, for our Mumbles collab, we decided to give it another blast with the soft fruity Waimea hops from New Zealand.

OK, it looks like an algae-covered pond, but I'm sure it'll taste lovely!  We've given it a stir a couple of times and each time it's returned to this state so that's it - we're leaving it alone until Friday when we cask it up!

Collab with Mumbles brewery

Today we did a collab with Rob Turner of Mumbles brewery; it was a proper collab in that both sides got stuff added and removed from the recipe which is just as it should be!  Despite our best efforts we haven't come up with a name as yet but that is being worked on...

We ended up with a pale ale brewed with 98% pale malt, mostly Maris Otter, plus a dab of malted wheat and hopped with Eldorado, Admiral and... erm.... Goldings!  yes, you read that correctly, UK Goldings were used, but as Rob uses them a lot and we don't it was decided that to be a proper collab we needed to bite the bullet and get some Goldings into the copper...  It'll be dry-hopped with Waimea in the fermenter, another diversion from usual politburo diktats, to speed up the dry-hopping process and also to see what happens.

It's also the biggest brew we've ever done at 2400 litres; it started off as 2275 but, after taking the SG reading on transfer, we found it to be 3 points over target and decided to "liquor back" with 125 litres of water to achieve the intended gravity of 1045.8 giving, potentially, an ABV of 5% or so.

Some photos from the day are below...

You'll fit a bit more in there...

Gazza and Jay with the Goldings

Rob with some lovely Eldorado

Rob adding the aroma hops

More hops!

Mashing in

Gazza "working"

Bamberg trip 2014

Let's just say this... if you're going to go to a prestigious event like the Weyermann Bavarian party, don't go out drinking with a load of mad Catalan brewers the night before.  Trust me, just don't do it.

The Weyermann do was a good evening though, great beer, food and company... here's to next year!

Kevin, Gazza and Pep at Zapfhahn, Bamberg

German craft beers in the hotel room

Yes, hop liquor chocolate!!

The Weyermann distillery's beer schnapps

Kevin and Gazza in Pizzini, Bamberg

 

Pep with a superb tattoo!!

Inside Schlenkerla, Bamberg

Red Water

...is apparently what Waimea means, so that's what we are calling our latest super-pale brew as it's made with Waimea as the main dry-hop addition; makes sense, really I suppose.

It's currently in FV2 on chill after it's primary fermentation and will be going into conditioning tanks 4 and 5 next Monday along with 5kg of aforementioned Waimea New Zealand hops which smell like those pineapple cubes you used to get from sweet shops if you're old enough to remember those!

And, having used the new Muntons "super-pale" malt, it's extremely pale in colour, almost industrial lager yellow in colour!  The picture below is from our 100th brew, but it's looking quite similar to this.

It's looking similar to this.... which is VERY pale, believe me!

Two new beers in cask

Well, one is new, the other is actually version 2....

Today we racked up "Exercise One", our latest pale, fruity 5% brew from the Joy Division series, plus version 2 of "Naughty Boy!" our oatmeal pale ale with a much-revised recipe from version 1 which means, basically, more and better hops!

Tomorrow it's a trip down the M4 to Reading and Wantage with a full vanload including some of the casks we racked today - things don't hang around long here - before a brewday on Thursday of our as yet un-named NZ super-pale ale with Pacific Jade, Waimea and Dr Rudi.

Off to Bavaria!

Well, Franconia actually, which as any fule kno is technically part of Bavaria, but far superior for brewing much better beer and being the name of a 40.  But you already knew that...

But why Franconia in November?  Well, it's that time of year when the Weyermann maltings in Bamberg, still family run and operating from a Lowryesque Victorian era brick complex (with plenty of new bits added on), throws open the doors for their annual "Bavarian party" where customers from around the world are invited to roll up, say hello to the Weyermann family, then eat and drink lots of lovely comestibles including - in my opinion - the most interesting German beers brewed on the on-site brewery; what's not to like?

It's an invitation-only affair so you need to be recommended; luckily for us Farams, the hop merchants, like us enough to put us forwards onto the invitation list and so Gazza is off to Germany on Friday, flying with Lufthansa to really get into the German spirit of things!  It's not just a jolly - as much as it may sound like one - as much chin wagging with other brewers will be done and ideas for new beers brought back.

Before that, though, we're doing some work and casking up some "Exercise One", the latest Joy Division series brew - this one containing Citra and Eldorado - and "Naughty Boy", our oatmeal pale ale which is crafted from a whole host of fruity hops.   We'll also be putting away the casks of "Cloister Enkel" which were racked last week and have spent the weekend conditioning in the brewery plus all the random cleaning, tidying and suchlike these procedures inevitably invoke.

We're also brewing again: this time we're sticking with the super pale malt but this time with New Zealand hops; Dr Rudi, Waimea and Pacific Jade will be utilised to produce what we hope will be a lovely mellow fruity brew with the trademark NZ soft tropical zestiness... it's as yet un-named, as is now traditional for us!

On the up and coming list - and yes, there actually is one of these - are "Permanent Revolution", our red half-IPA, another brew of Golden Pixie, the next Joy Division beer "Something must Break" which uses Citra and Chinook, plus the start of our "Insult to History" series of beers which may kick off with an Imperial Mild... maybe, we've not decided yet.

Gyle 100, and what happens next

We finally did it.... we brewed our 100th gyle of beer!!

It's taken us 17 months to get here, but "every hop i love is dead" is now in FV1 with a pack of US05 yeast which, Bacchus willing, will turn it into a super-pale hoppy beast.

Gyle 100 is a simple beer; 97% super-pale malt and 3% wheat malt, then Warrior, Cascade and Simcoe hops in the copper and more lovely Simcoe in the conditioning tank.  Warrior is used as it's a stunningly good bittering hop with low cohumulone (the substance in hops which  determines how harsh the resulting bitterness will be) and plenty of citrussy flavour, Cascade as it's the hop which got me into the sticky green bracts back in 1990 when I first tasted Brendan Dobbin's beer in Manchester, and Simcoe because.... well, just because we can.

We've emptied the coldstore this week with 60+ casks going out so have been busy refilling it with Citraic, Who's been Sleeping in my Brain?, Slave to the Wage and, tomorrow, Cloister Enkel ready for your delectation in, as they say, all good pubs near you very soon!

Next week sees us brewing yet another new beer; the recipe hasn't been decided upon yet but it maybe an all-NZ beastie or maybe one that Jay has been thinking about... we'll see next week, there's no rush to decide...

We may also have some very big news to announce soon, but until we know for sure I'm saying nowt lest we jinx it.

Keep the faith, lupulin lovers....

Jay drinking Citraic straight from the racking wand!

It's veeeeeery pale.... !  Gyle 100 transferring to FV

Warrior have some lovely twigs in!

Brew 100 at last!

We're hopeful that out 100th brew, "every hop i love is dead", will occur on Thursday this week, Bacchus permitting of course.  It's a very pale brew thanks to the special "super pale" Muntons malt, and hopped with Simcoe and Cascade; simple yet, hopefully, very effective.

More details as they happen!